Therapists and analysts are taught in their training to be wary of anyone who seems too settled and sure in their gender identity and gender role. The tycoon who seems so capable and dynamic, such a marvelous self-starter, is—secretly, in his unconscious—a sobbing, little boy, dependent on others, maybe mainly female, for all his feelings of safeness and security.

Andrew Samuels, Jungian Analyst (Society of Analytical Psychology, London)

Published in Achilles Heel, Summer 1995, pp. 10-11.
Copyright 1995 Andrew Samuels. All rights reserved.

Therapists and analysts are taught in their training to be wary of anyone who seems too settled and sure in their gender identity and gender role. The tycoon who seems so capable and dynamic, such a marvelous self-starter, is—secretly, in his unconscious—a sobbing, little boy, dependent on others, maybe mainly female, for all his feelings of safeness and security. The Don Juan, talking incessantly in therapy of the seduced list, turns out to have the deepest desires to be female himself and to be seduced by another.

Behind gender certainty lurks gender confusion, or so we were all told in the training. But we were told something else that enhanced the first formula (so client-friendly), turns it into a means of controlling feeling and behavior. We were also told that, in addition to needing to be suspicious of gender certainty, it was also a good thing for a client to be certain about gender, to know for sure that, in spite of everything, he is a man. So it seemed that there was a good form of gender certainty and a bad form of gender certainty and this divide between good or bad was somehow expressible as an amount. The therapist kept count. Too much all-knowing and settled tycoonery—bad. A man's longings to be a woman—bad. Knowing that one is a man and knowing how one differs psychologically from the other sex (always, to be noted, the "opposite" sex)—good.

Whilst this approach certainly made the therapists and analysts feel fine about themselves, I began to see that, for many people, quite another idea was needed to make sense of what they were experiencing in the muddled and mysterious world of late twentieth-century gender relations and gender politics.

Many of the men who came to see me for therapy were manifestly and magnificently confused about their gender identity. Not only were they not at all sure how a man was supposed to behave but they were not sure that, given what they knew about their internal lives, a healthy man could possibly feel or fantasize what it was that they themselves were feeling and fantasizing.

Now what I noticed was that, for these profound feelings of gender confusion to exist, there had to be an equally profound feeling of gender certainty to be in operation at some level. You cannot know the detail of your confusion without having an inkling about the certitude against which you are measuring your confusion. The client sobbing his little boy heart out knows very well that tycoons exist and evaluates himself negatively as a result. Indeed, we could even say: no gender certitude, no gender confusion!

What this means is that, to a very great degree, gender confusion is manufactured or constructed in people by the pernicious operation of gender certainty. If we agree that these certainties are part of socialization and cultural process, then it is hard to deny that the parallel confusions are equally artificial constructions and not at all the personal wounds or even failures that most therapists and clients have taken them to be.

Let me underscore the radical implications of what I am saying. We need to extend the conventional therapy insight that gender confusion lies behind gender certainty to see that gender certainty lies behind gender confusion. To the extent that gender confusion is usually taken as a mental health problem or a neurosis, it is a colossal mistake and even a most destructive con trick being played on those supposedly suffering from gender confusion.

Enter the men's movement! The perception that many men living in a feminist-tinged culture feel confused about who they are as men takes on a rather different cast when looked at in the light of what they have been saying about gender confusion. Behind the apparent confusion and the pain that many men feel lies the kind of unconscious gender certainty that we import from the culture by internalization. From this angle, modern men are not at all confused—or, rather feeling confused is simply not the main problem at depth. The problem is being afflicted with a gender certitude that simply is no use to them and maybe is actually harmful to their potential.

When men's movement leaders offer, via meaningful ritual, initiation, and mentoring, the certainty that seems to be missing from the lives of men, they were unwittingly doing nothing more than bringing the unconscious gender certainty that was always there to the surface. As that certainty came from the culture in the first place, there's nothing radical or scene-shifting about it at all.

The really interesting question coming out of this concerns what to do with the feelings of gender confusion from which everyone suffers these days. Clearly, on a personal level, we need to measure the confusion against the certainty. If we do this, we may find we are not as badly confused as we thought we were. It is not necessary to be confused about being gender-confused. You can evaluate your con- fusion and decide what to do with it.

I think there is a lot we can do with gender confusion. I can see that it all becomes easier to do in words if you replace "confusion" with something that sounds a lot more positive like "fluidity," "flexibility" or even (hateful word) by supporting "androgyny." I realize it is a hard sell and won't win votes but I want to stick up for the word "confusion" because it is an experience-near word, capturing what I do indeed feel about my gender identity.

So—what can be done with gender confusion? I think such confusion contributes something to social and political reform and change. Gender is a key element in modern politics because it sits halfway between the inner and the outer worlds. Gender is a story we tell about ourselves that is two-thirds private. It is also something upon which most cultures have erected a welter of oppressive practices and regulations mostly favouring men.

Many men want to make a progressive contribution to gender politics and hence (as men) to the wider political scene. Perhaps they could do it in part on the basis of a frank refraining of how we evaluate the confusion-certainty spectrum in relation to being a man. It isn't necessary to refuse to be a man or enter into a spurious sociopolitical alliance with women, fueled by what has been called "victim envy," that denies the existence of differing political agendas for the sexes. All that may be required in the first instance is a celebration of not knowing too well about who we are in terms of gender, not knowing too well what we are supposed to know very well indeed.

This has not been a tightly argued academic piece in which the distinctions between sex and gender have been carefully worked through. In fact, I think it is time to bring back the linguistic confusions we thought we had gone beyond. We need to access what is involved in gen- der confusion and gender certainty in a new language of fleshy images that speak to people. My eight year old son and seven year old daughter have been teaching me their theory of gender confusion and this has helped me to write about its positive aspects and to distinguish what I am interested in (which is self-image at depth) from the more conventional, journalistic level at which men are simply regarded as mixed up because of what women have managed to achieve.

According to my children, there are four main categories which a person cannot escape: boy-boy, boy-girl, girl-girl and girl-boy. The categories are all considered absolutely equal and are very sophisticated in that anatomy is regarded as important but not decisive. (How hard to get that degree of realistic flexibility into academic discourse!) So my daughter can often refer to herself as a girl-girl while my son oscillates between being a boy-girl and a girl-boy. However, one day, my daughter may function as a boy-boy or as a girl-boy. Context is centrally important—it does depend on whom they are with.

Anyway, the point I am making is that the celebration of confusion embodied by these children may be a more effective, interesting and radical way to enter gender politics that either a) the suspicious ness and judgementalism of the therapist; or b) the nostalgia-fueled return to certainty we see in some aspects of the men's movement; or c) the advocacy of an ersatz merger of men's sociopolitical interests with those of women. Gender confusion unsettles all the main alternatives on offer.

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